times of danger and decisions
by cedricsowner
Summary: Erin Strauss back at work. It's hard, but she's not alone. Mild spoilers for season finale. Series of loosely connected one-shots.
1. prelude

**Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds and intend no copyright infringement. **

It's not the first day, when everybody is really nice to you. Not even the first week, when everybody remembers they _should _be really nice to you. Or the first month, for that matter. But one day, and it comes way too soon, you're back at work and all the problems that almost broke you the first time around are back, too.

_Good to see you, Erin. We missed you._

Did Morgan know that she'd been tempted? That she'd felt the strongest urge in months this morning between the financial review board meeting, the call from the internal affairs division and the sixteen messages regarding violations of the anti-fraternisation rule between agents?

In the light of recent events, she felt like a hypocrite, going after those.

When Morgan appeared with a cup of coffee, pitch black, no milk, no sugar, NOT FLAVORED, she felt inclined to tell him she didn't need his pity.

But she did need that coffee, boy, did she need that coffee.

Now, someone brings you coffee, you don't just grab it and kick him out.

They talked.

Great way of finding out that the whole BAU team knew about her one-night stand with Rossi. How in the world...?

"We're profilers...", Morgan shrugged nonchalantly.

She rolled her eyes at him. "Somebody saw us, right?"

Now he laughed without putting up a show. "You would have been a good profiler, too."

Nicest thing she'd hear all day.

Which probably played a part in inviting him to dinner when they bumped into each other at the elevator after work.

Nothing fancy, just a regular Italian restaurant.

He raised an eyebrow at "Italian".

"Rossi and I are at peace with each other. Let's call it an arrangement."

She feared the moment he'd drop her off at her doorstep. If he tried to kiss her, she'd have to remind him who she was, his BOSS and they'd never have dinner together again.

If he didn't try, she'd be disappointed.

She ended up disappointed.

But not too disappointed to go out again and get a bottle. It had been a nice evening after all. She took a long bath, turning up Vivaldi's Four Seasons really loud.

When she returned to her living-room there were two messages on her answering machine. One from Rossi, inviting her to an opera night in New York... and a nice hotel suit. The other one from Morgan, inviting her to brunch at a local diner this weekend.

She called Morgan back.


	2. Spanish lesson

**Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds and intend no copyright infringement.**

_**A/N1: Big thanks to Leigh59 who helped me with the Spanish so incredibly fast! **_

_**A/N2: I don't really know where to go with this, whether to add more chapters or not. FFnet isn't exactly fun at the moment and I feel a bit unsure about things. Anyway, Lenika asked for a continuation, so I tried. Hope you enjoy! **_

* * *

_When it rains, it pours. _

After the day she had had, Erin would have not only signed that statement, she'd also put her official Unit Chief stamp underneath it and sealed it with the goddamn "of highest importance" FBI seal.

Jeez, had it poured today.

And it was neither the fault of the financial review board, nor of internal affairs nor of Aaron Hotchner's lot.

Which was saying something.

All she had done was go shopping. The short afternoon trip to the mall had been meant as a reward for another week of staying sober. One of the things they had taught her: Treat yourself, regularly, in small, controllable dosages. Choose different things. Don't focus on one thing only and thus substitute one crutch for another. Find out all kinds of stuff that make you happy and always have a wide array of options to choose from.

Well, after today, "shopping" was definitely off the list.

A woman had stumbled towards her, a stranger, older than middle-aged maybe, but it was hard to say. Although her clothes were a bit out of fashion, her appearance was neat and tidy. She must have been pretty, once upon a time, but deep worry lines significantly marred the finely-cut face now, gave her a bitter, resigned expression and possibly put her beyond her true age.

She was clutching her chest, crying something in Spanish.

At first Erin suspected some sort of fraud, grabbed her purse tighter and glanced around for any suspicious strangers, but when the woman sank down on her knees and her skin lost all color, she quickly called an ambulance. A shop owner from nearby came running with a defibrillator.

Erin held the woman's hand. This was something she had learned from Garcia – nothing was more important in times of panic and despair than knowing that another human being was present.

And despaired and panicky the poor woman was. She was running out of air, of time maybe, and obviously there was something she felt needed to be said. Erin spoke no Spanish. She realized the woman was repeating the same sentence over and over again, but that was it.

"Did you get what she was saying?", she asked the shop owner with the defibrillator after the ambulance had departed, but he only shrugged.

"_Por favor_ means "please", so I guess she was asking for something, but what that was..." He let the sentence trail off, feeling saddened himself.

The woman died on her way to the hospital.

How the hell Morgan found out about the whole incident, Erin had no clue. At least he didn't try to feed her that "I'm a profiler, you know?" BS this time. He just rang her doorbell and, when she opened, wordlessly touched her shoulder in support.

She led him into the living-room, offered him a glass of soda or whatever he wanted.

Even without his profiler knowledge, Morgan would have realized pretty much immediately that this was a danger night. Strauss was fidgety, on edge, nervous and in general made the impression of a caged animal.

He asked what was going on and she told him about the woman's sentence.

"She said it with such urgency... literally clawed at my wrist..." Erin showed him the still visible marks. "And I simply didn't understand. She asked me for something... something important..."

Morgan thought long and hard... A lost sentence in Spanish... uttered by a now dead woman... recorded nowhere... except in Strauss' memory, but since she didn't understand...

"Hang on!"

Erin could see he had an idea and although she had no clue what it could possibly be, suddenly the knot in her stomach started to loosen.

Unless he told her to put on her coat, ushered her into his car and drove her back to the dreadful place where the woman had collapsed, that is.

"I don't think..." she started to protest, but Morgan whipped out his mobile.

"Babygirl? Get your equipment ready for take-off! You've got access to voice recognition and translation software, haven't you? If we transmit a sentence to you, could you try and find its possible meaning?"

"Give me five minutes and I'll have access to the newest version", Garcia replied.

Strauss chose not to dwell on what illegal activity fulfilling that announcement included. She had other problems at hand to deal with anyway.

"But I don't remember the sentence! The words made no sense to me, so I forgot them!"

Morgan looked at her for a moment, obviously unsure about something. Then his demeanor changed – he had come to a decision. Gently he reached out and very softly pressed his right index finger against her lips.

"Close your eyes and concentrate... on the smell... on the sounds... where were you planning to go when she approached you... what were you thinking of?"

"A green scarf", Erin grumbled, feeling foolish, standing with closed eyes on the sidewalk like this.

"Describe the scarf to me. Why did you want it?"

"It's made of a special type of silk. Very rare, not exactly cheap... the green color is the color of... it's ridiculous..."

"Go on, tell me." Morgan's voice, a faint whisper.

"Mossy stones under water... reminded me of a river behind our home... when I was a child..."

Oddly enough, Erin had the feeling as if she could hear that river again, the swirling of the water...

Suddenly there it was – not the Spanish sentence itself, but the sound of it! She spoke it as it resounded in her mind – a mishmash of vaguely Iberian sounding noises.

"Got that, babygirl?"

Babygirl got it.

Unfortunately the software didn't. It came up with dozens of possible options, none making sense. Parts of what Erin remembered were just too vague.

"But some parts aren't vague at all!", Garcia explained to them after running the software three times. Morgan and Strauss had made it back home to Erin's in the meantime.

"In all versions the words _por favor_, _Eduardo_ and _una carta_ remain the same. I did a quick online check and it seems the woman had a son named Eduardo. She left him behind fifteen years ago, when she got divorced from Eduardo's father. Maybe we should contact him?"

They did.

A couple of days later, Morgan came walking into Erin's office and retrieved a small piece of paper from his pocket. "The sentence must have been _Por __favor, dile a Eduardo que le dejè una carta debajo del fregadero de trastos. - Tell Eduardo that I've left a letter for him underneath the kitchen sink_", he read. "Or something else in that direction."

Erin's mouth literally fell open. "He found a letter from his mother, under the kitchen sink, after fifteen years?"

"His father had found it, ten years ago, when they got a new kitchen. The father kept the letter, never told him... but when his son asked about it... apparently he couldn't keep it a secret any longer. This one here is for you, by the way." Morgan handed her a white envelope, addressed to her.

"From Eduardo."

Nodding at her encouragingly, Morgan left, almost bumping into Rossi who was just then coming in with a small parcel. "You've given someone peace", he explained, then left, too.

Erin recognized the wrapping of the parcel. It was from the shop with the expensive scarf.

Nevertheless she opened the letter first.


	3. problems and nuisances

**Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds and intend no copyright infringement.**

_~ for Lenika08~_

Somewhere she had read that it's important to always know the difference between a nuisance and a problem. As in: A broken pencil is a nuisance, a broken arm is problem.

Granted, from that point of view a washing machine that doesn't want to start washing is a nuisance.

But if you've had a day filled with three nonsense meetings about financial questions in a row, in between got notified about new office decoration rules during holidays (Don't they have anything else to do?) and were yelled at by a certain BAU profiler for pulling the plug on a going nowhere case...

Erin opened and closed the machine's door one more time – sometimes that helped, but this time around nothing happened. Theoretically there should at least appear some sort of fault code on the display, but nothing. Complete breakdown of communication.

Calling Dr. Reid would probably provide her with a not-so-short overview on the history of washing machines, if she asked Rossi for help he'd buy her a new one, Hotchner would silently disapprove of the fact that she had misplaced the manual somewhere and Garcia would probably get her an online pdf version of said manual.

They'd all try to help.

But only Morgan would _really_ know what to do. He knew his way around these hands-on things, had taught her how to change a tire and get the pond pump working again.

But they had fought.

He had yelled at her.

Damnit, the washing machine not working WAS a problem!

Because it reminded her of a much bigger one.

She was getting desperate.

Just then her cell phone signaled. Text message. From Morgan!

_Remember, I'm always there to talk. Work is only one thing..._

Erin let out a deep sigh of relief. So, work-wise, he was still angry with her, but that didn't mean he didn't want to have anything to do with her in general.

The not-working washing machine was slowly losing its "problem"-status.

Wait.

Why had he called her on her cell although he knew she was at home? He often called her on her landline. The battery of her landline phone had been low and she had put it on the charge station... it should have rung there...

Unless...

Erin flipped the light switch of the ceiling lamp.

No reaction.

It wasn't the washing machine that was faulty – the whole house was without electricity.

A quick online check with her cell revealed that half the city was experiencing a temporary power outage.

No big deal. Just a nuisance, really.

She passed the time with sending texts. One to Morgan.

And another one to Rossi, for good measure.


	4. water cooler talk

**Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds and intend no copyright infringement. **

They didn't know she had overheard them. Two secretaries at the water cooler.

Mere girls, from her point of view. Hardly out of their diapers.

What did their opinion matter?

Two or three years ago, she would have shrugged it off.

And, depending on the amount of administrative BS she'd have had to deal with in the same time window, she'd have made them pay.

Can you say "ban on taking time off"?

It had never been difficult for her to find bureaucratic justifications for payback.

But that was light years ago. Her armor had become seriously dented since.

_Drunkard. Will relapse soon. Like an accident waiting to happen. They should cut her loose. _

No matter how hard she tried to push these words out of her head, they haunted her the whole day.

In the evening she asked Rossi if she could join him on his weekend trip to his cabin in the woods.

"You want to shoot something?", he asked, eyebrows raised.

"Actually, yes."

When she packed her bag she couldn't find any other rubber boots in the house than the ones with the huge red flowers Penelope had given her.

Together with the bright yellow rain coat Morgan hat put on her shoulders one very nasty night where she had practically fled from… long story. He had led her keep it.

All in all she created a really nice contrast to Rossi's camouflage outfit.

She ended up shying all the ducks away before he could hit any of them.

"I thought you wanted to shoot something!", he complained, not really mad.

"It doesn't matter anymore. It really doesn't." She took a deep breath of the cool fresh mountain air and was glad she had come.

Ha, and come Monday, she'd assign a certain pair of secretaries to mandatory survival training.

Everybody needs a breath of fresh air every now and then…

Out of the blue, Rossi kissed her.

"What…?"

"Just welcomed your evil smile back", he grinned. "It's been a while."


	5. Spanish lesson II

**Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds and intend no copyright infringement. **

"You should learn Italian", Rossi said, looking at her over the rim of his glass of orange juice with that dangerous twinkle in his eyes she had found harder and harder to resist lately.

Sighing because this evening might end with yet another defeat, Erin tried to concentrate on her index cards and replied with a mere arching of her eyebrows.

"Italian is the language of love, romance, passion", Rossi elaborated, obviously enjoying the subject. "All the great ladies' men spoke Italian: Romeo, Casanova, Don Giovanni…"

Erin rolled her eyes.

Of course that didn't stop him at all.

"And the Spanish? Whom do they have? Zorro!"

With a determined gesture, Erin handed him the index cards with the new Spanish words she had learned over the weekend. She hadn't gotten far yet, only mastered numbers, colors and seasons for the time being.

"Morgan taught me a complete sentence in Spanish when he heard you offered to help me memorizing the new vocabulary", she told Rossi.

Now it was Rossi's turn to raise a questioning eyebrow.

_"Le quebras el corazon, te rompemos el cuello"_, she recited. "He said it's a very important sentence. It means _I'd like to buy a dozen apples and half a dozen bananas. Could you please pack them in a bag?_ I'm not so sure, though, what's so important about apples and bananas."

Rossi didn't actually speak Spanish, but Spanish and Italian were similar enough to quickly give him an idea of what she (or, more accurately, Derek Morgan) had just told him.

The rest of the evening he strictly stuck to testing her newly acquired vocabulary. Before midnight he left with a gentle kiss on her forehead.

A bit stunned by his unusual reticence, Erin went into her study, switched on her computer and looked up the words of the sentence Morgan had taught her.

_Quebrar – to break something_

_Corazón – heart_

_Romper – to break something_

_Cuello – neck_

_You break her… I break your… _

Oh.


End file.
